


Semper Fi

by Lapsed_Scholar



Series: Season 9 Rewrites and Musings [3]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Character Study, Episode: s09e07 John Doe, F/M, Missing Scenes, more or less
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 01:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13376787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapsed_Scholar/pseuds/Lapsed_Scholar
Summary: Four ways of looking at a missing persons case.





	Semper Fi

_October 2001_

“Wait, slow down, Scully, I can’t understand you.” Mulder’s Calming-Scully-Down voice is really quite similar to his Talking-Suspects-Down voice. Dana Scully glares at the phone and reflects on the pros and cons of falling in love with someone you know so intimately.

“Kersh stopped the search. After we _finally_ got that breakthrough—the first real lead that we’ve had in awhile—he just shut us down. He claimed that since John crossed into Mexico, the whole thing is now the responsibility of the Mexican authorities. We are all to stop looking. Skinner and I are needed on other assignments. Monica can stay in San Antonio, but she is not to cross the border, and I got the distinct impression that she wouldn’t get any support, either. I think he was just waiting for a reason, an excuse.”

“You know, the one thing about this case that never quite sat right with me is why they put Doggett on it in the first place. It’s drug smuggling and a missing money launderer around the Mexican border. I get that the FBI is shorthanded these days with current events, but it makes more sense to farm it out to the DEA than the X-Files. And if you’re going to assign it to the X-Files, why send Doggett instead of Reyes?”

“Doggett _does_ have extensive experience in missing persons cases.” She’s pleased at how impassive her voice sounds. The sting of Doggett’s most recent missing persons case still hasn’t faded.

“Then why not send him _with_ Reyes? She was raised in Mexico—she knows the territory around there far better than Doggett, and she’s a native Spanish speaker. It seems like she would have been of substantial help to him, if they actually wanted this thing properly investigated.” His rejoinder follows her counterpoint immediately, and she lets the familiar tone of his voice, the well-worn pattern of the conversation soothe her. His Socratic method of leading her through his thought processes once annoyed her (and probably will again), but she’s missed it too much to be annoyed just now.

“What are you saying?”

“I think this whole thing’s political. Until he got stuck on the X-Files—by Kersh—Doggett had one of the brightest futures in the FBI. I think you’re right that Kersh was looking for a reason to shut down the search, and I think he’s been trying to get rid of the man he sees as his biggest rival.”

She sighs. What he’s glossing over is that the impossibility of recovering _him_ was supposed to kill John Doggett’s career. “But how do these suspicions help us? What do we do now?”

“Well, I’m thinking you should obey Kersh like a good little agent and go back to teaching at Quantico.”

_What the actual fuck?_ Her voice is sharp. “How can you say that? To _me_? I owe John Doggett more than I can possibly express, and—”

“Just hang on a second, Scully.” There’s that soothing tone again. “Kersh will be watching you—you know he will. And you’re going to have a far harder time justifying your time away—or disguising it—than Skinner will. And you know that both of you coincidentally vanishing from Washington at once, right after you were told to drop the case, is going to prompt an inquiry of some kind.”

“ _Mulder_ —”

“And, besides, we need someone on the ground in Washington with decent government access and experience unearthing sensitive information.”

“ _We_?”

“I hear San Antonio is lovely this time of year.”

~

Walter Skinner sits in the airport, pensive. He’s trying not to to draw hasty conclusions from the amount of time no one has heard from Agent Doggett. That picture of him crossing into Mexico is at least something, but he’s not sure if it’s made their search easier or harder, with how much new ground they have to cover, and how many new jurisdictions just opened up.

He needs to get to the Mexican authorities, to coordinate efforts between agencies, to see what information they have, and to offer the information he has. If they want to recover Doggett, they need to have coordinated efforts and careful direction of the resources they do have. Kersh has to understand that. If Kersh makes a point of pressing him for his involvement, Skinner thinks that level of reasoning should hold; if it has to, it will hold with their superiors.

He won’t simply leave Doggett to fate, and he can’t find much recourse other than to go and liaise with the Mexican authorities himself. He’ll stop and see Agent Reyes in San Antonio—he’ll be surprised if she stays long on the US side of the border, herself, now that they know Doggett had crossed at one point. She grew up in Mexico, after all. She’s uniquely suited for an on-the-ground search, and he doubts that she’s any more inclined to give up on Doggett than he is.

What drives the agents he oversees depends on the agent and, often, the department where they work. An old-fashioned contingent is motivated by ideals: truth, justice, and the American way. Some are driven toward investigations by an innate curiosity. Others are protectors, feeling kinship toward victims or valuing deterrence. A rare one or two genuinely loves the government; the occasional pair wind up loving each other.

They are all his agents, however. Their responsibility is to do their work. And his responsibility is to protect them. He may not be able to save the world himself. But he can keep safe the people who do.

The X-Files division does seem to demand an inordinate amount of his time on that score, especially considering it only _officially_ consists of two people at a time. He would hate being their boss if he weren’t so inexplicably fond of all of them.

Speaking of... A familiar form flops itself into the chair next to his. He honestly should have expected this.

“Fancy meeting you here, sir.” Fox Mulder has a peculiar way of delivering inane pleasantries. His expression and tone are bland enough to pass scrutiny, but something in his bearing always implies that a lively mind is humming away under the surface.

“What are you doing here?” Skinner feels the need to ask, even though it’s patently obvious—just as obvious as his own presence here, really.

“I need a vacation. I’ve been working too hard. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“Uh huh. You’re the primary caregiver for your five-month-old son, Mulder.”

“Precisely. Do you have any idea just how tiring that is?”

Skinner exhales something that might almost count as a chuckle as he shakes his head. “I suppose I can’t say that I do. I assume there’s no point in me telling you that the investigation has been officially suspended and is to be delegated to the Mexican authorities.”

Mulder scoffs. “What’s Kersh gonna do? Fire me? I’m just a civilian—in the end, the FBI has no say over where I go and what I do with my time. At least in theory. You, on the other hand? I have sources that tell me you were specifically told to stop your investigation by the Deputy Director.”

Skinner had forgotten, briefly, how annoying Fox Mulder could be. Although he’s not sure how.

“I’m not leaving an agent behind.” In the end, that’s really all there is to it.

Mulder nods soberly. He’s facing forward now, and he gives Skinner a sidelong look. His voice has grown quiet and serious. “Yeah, you never have. And, from what Scully tells me, neither has John Doggett.”

Skinner supposes that, in the end, that’s really all there is to it.

~

Fox Mulder calls Monica Reyes from outside the FBI field office in San Antonio. “I’ve got some information for you, but you’re gonna have to let me in.”

Reyes comes to the door in short order. The look in her eyes is determined and familiar. He knows it from the mirror: Fox Mulder, circa 1994. He feels a surge of kinship toward her.

“I suppose I don’t need to tell you that the case has been officially shut down, even here?” she says with a sigh, as he follows her down the halls.

“Yeah, that’s why your entire contingent of reinforcements consists of me, Scully digging around in Washington, and Skinner, who’s on the lam from Kersh and is currently on the way to coordinate with the Mexican federal police. We’re a small group, but decently scrappy.” He’s trying to cheer her up.

“Well, I hope scrappy is enough to do it,” she mumbles.

This isn’t the first time that Mulder’s wondered about the relationship between Doggett and Reyes—they do seem close, but there is more of the collegial about their relationship than the personal intensity that has always characterized his partnership with Scully. He pushes the thought out of his head: It’s none of his business, anyway. (Scully will wonder, idly, about the same thing to him in a few weeks. He will make a crack about the water in the basement.)

He settles into a table in an unobtrusive corner, and sets his briefcase on top of it.

“I’ve got files in here from similar cases—some are similar in location and others in certain elements that seemed to Scully and me to be significant. But first...” He hands her a piece of paper, on which he has scribbled notes from the conversation he had with Scully during his brief stop to check in at the hotel.

Old Blevins would turn over in his grave if he knew just how adept Dana Scully could be at spying when she actually wanted to be.

Reyes crumples her brow as she tries to decipher the handwriting. He realizes that he’s gotten so used to working with Scully that he’d forgotten that she’s the only other person who can really read his field notes.

He translates. “A notice came in from the Marine Corps Public Affairs Office. A Detective Latadel called them trying to get a trace on a former Marine matching Agent Doggett’s description. The detective said that the Marine had been in an accident and was possibly suffering from amnesia.”

Reyes gives him an odd look. “Detective Latadel? Are you sure?”

“That’s what Scully said.”

“Latadel is a Mexican telephone calling card.”

“An alias?”

“By someone who isn’t familiar with their Mexican surroundings, it sounds like.”

“I’ll see if Scully can glean enough information from the Bureau to have the Gunmen trace it. She should be done teaching in about fifteen minutes.”

He opens the briefcase and begins pulling out the files, sorting them into piles for scrutiny. Reyes looks a little surprised, but also impressed by their number. Maybe even a touch hopeful. “How did you get all of those?”

He bats his eyelashes and gives her a coy smile. “You know, Agent Reyes, it’s amazing the kind of documents you can get your hands on if you’re sleeping with an FBI Agent. You Feds might want to check the stringency of your internal security.”

~

Monica Reyes checks and double-checks her supplies: weapon, extra ammo, phone, Mexican ID, picture of John. She also has cell phone and current local contact numbers for Skinner, Mulder, and Dana.

Mulder had offered to go into Mexico with her, as backup. She found the offer touching, but declined it.

“No offense, but you’re not exactly going to blend in down there—you’d blow my cover.”

“Hey, I’ve done undercover work before.”

“In Mexico?”

“Well... no.”

“How’s your Spanish?”

“...I can order off the menu at a Mexican restaurant?”

“That’s what I thought.”

She feels that this whole thing is unfair, somehow, in a deeply cosmic sense. Unfair that this should happen to John Doggett. Loyal, solid, straightforward, honest, reliable John.

He’s her partner, dammit. She’s going to get him back.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sort of agnostic on the whole Doggett/Reyes thing. It doesn't strike me as all that *natural* of a pairing, and it's kind of weird to me that "The X-Files," of all shows, would push a romance like that, but I'm not going to just completely dash it. They like each other, and they respect each other. That's good enough for this story.
> 
> Fun fact: This almost got a G rating, but Scully's swearing ruined it.


End file.
